Suspect in Sedgwick County Courthouse threat a felon without gun rights, sheriff says

Several times over the past year, people in downtown Wichita have called 911 to report a man carrying an assault rifle, with a handgun and ax tucked into his waistband.

They feared for their safety, the callers said. Each time, authorities told them the man wasn’t breaking the law because legislation went into effect July 1, 2014, legalizing the open carry of firearms.

But if the man is who authorities suspect he was, it turns out he might have been breaking the law after all, Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter said Friday.

A man who was arrested Thursday on suspicion of threatening to attack the Sedgwick County Courthouse – Samuel McCrory, 22 – pleaded guilty to aggravated battery as a juvenile in Rice County in 2008, according to records obtained by The Eagle. The felony carried with it a 10-year ban on possessing a firearm, Easter said.

“We have to fully investigate how any times he was in violation of the law by being in possession of a firearm,” Easter said.

Investigators will be going back through 911 archives through at least last July to collect all the times people called in to report seeing a man with a gun. They also will be looking for surveillance video to corroborate the reports.

“We’ve got to prove that it was him,” Easter said. “This isn’t easy. But it’s something we should look at.”

When the threat to storm the courthouse and shoot law enforcement officers was posted on social media, “we did our normal checks on” the suspect, Easter said.

That included running McCrory’s name through local criminal databases and the National Crime Incident Computer. That turned up nothing, Easter said.

It wasn’t until they learned after his arrest on Thursday that McCrory was from Sterling that they contacted Rice County and discovered his juvenile felony conviction. Juvenile crimes aren’t included in the NCIC database.

The Eagle obtained copies of McCrory’s juvenile court records from Rice County District Court on Friday. At 15, he pleaded guilty to aggravated battery, a felony, in December 2008. His mother was the victim, according to the complaint filed in the case.

He has two misdemeanor battery convictions for assaults against his mother in January and March 2008 when he was 14, records show. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges in another case, for criminal damage to property, in exchange for his guilty pleas in the battery cases, according to court documents.

McCrory also was charged with misdemeanor battery in 2004 and 2005 when he was 11 and 12, but a Rice County District Court clerk said those records are closed “due to the defendant’s age at the time of the offense.” The disposition of those cases was not immediately clear Friday.

Easter said that when McCrory was arrested this week, he had a handgun in his waistband, and investigators found a rifle and a shotgun at his residence. McCrory was booked into jail at 9:50 p.m. Thursday on three counts of criminal possession of a firearm as well as criminal threat, according to jail records. He was arrested at an apartment complex at 2323 N. Woodlawn.

Easter announced early Thursday afternoon that authorities were looking for a suspect following a series of postings on Facebook. A man later identified as McCrory had asked, “Is it out of line to storm the courthouse if he’s found guilty?”

The question was linked to the trial in which Kyler Carriker was facing a felony murder charge in the April 2013 shooting death of Ronald Betts during a marijuana deal. A jury found Carriker not guilty Thursday of felony murder.

Later in the online conversation thread, the same person wrote, “I’m down as long as you guys don’t mind me being armed.”

When someone else responded, “It is your RIGHT,” he replied, “Not just that. It’s a necessity. If we get a decent number of people to charge through the front doors and security, the police there will attack us. Often times, the only way to defend yourself from a cop is to kill the cop which means using a rifle to penetrate their body armor.”

Even with the calls to 911 about someone walking around town with a gun in clear view, Easter said law enforcement officers couldn’t stop McCrory – or anyone else – simply because he had a gun.

“You have to have some reasonable suspicion or probable cause” that someone is committing a crime before authorities can stop someone and run a background check on them, Easter said.

At the time, authorities didn’t realize McCrory had a felony conviction and thus couldn’t lawfully possess a gun.

This story was originally published July 31, 2015 at 9:57 PM with the headline "Suspect in Sedgwick County Courthouse threat a felon without gun rights, sheriff says."